How the hell did the police dispatch not urgently send a squad car (or two) down after John's warning about Hans, and also hearing shots fired, since they didn't hang up after dismissing John's call? Unless, of course...

Adding to that, why didn't John give his name, badge ID, and department? He likely knew Hans' men were listening, and that they wanted him dead. It wasn't like he was on a secure channel. And the way he was calling it in was far too police-like for Hans and his men to think it was a party-goer. And if John was on a secure channel? He wouldn't have to hide it. The biggest writing/plot slip-up of the film, even if it was required to both add tension and bring Al into the film.

Giving the dispatcher his name, badge number, etc would have brought the LAPD into the fray more easily, but it would also have risked exposing Holly - watch close when Hans announces that he knows who John is, and that a "close, personal friend" wants to talk with him; John mouths, "Holly," fearing for her life. Up until that point, the closest that Hans gets is assuming that John is a security guard for the building.

Is it really FBI policy to cut the power to a building during a siege? The phone lines I can understand (though the 'terrorists' in Die Hard do that themselves) but cutting the electricity seems like an awful provocation in a volatile situation.

It depends. The phone lines are always cut, but the power is something they would consider on a case-by-case basis.

Which begs the question : how did the 'terrorists' know that the FBI would do it in this case? They were relying on it. Their plan would have failed without it.

Whether it's standard policy in real life, it is in the movie. Several characters say it's a known part of the "anti-terrorist handbook."

Cutting the power means that the terrorists lose lighting, air conditioning, and possibly plumbing. The idea is to "sweat them out" as the FBI guy said; make them so uncomfortable that they give up. Also means that they lose the elevators, so they have less freedom of mobility within the building.

Its worth pointing out to younger tropers that the first Die Hard came out 7 years before Oklahoma City and 13 years before 9/11. Giving in to demands and/or trying to flush them out was still considered a decent way to a peaceful solution.

Remember also, these FBI agents are spoiling for a fight. It is always a good idea when going into a fight to get any advantages you can and by taking out the power it sows confusion among the enemy. It would cost hostage lives but they were already treating civilian deaths with a "meh". They just misunderstood their enemy's intentions and planning.

Related to the above, how is it that when Nakatomi Plaza loses power, it's got enough backup power for emergency lighting, for withdrawing the maglocked door, and for audio-announcements and alarms, yet not enough backup power to keep their electromagnetic vault shut?

It could be a safety backup. No power could trap someone in the vault. The designers probably figured that if the power was out, people would be wanting to get out of the building.

Also, emergency lights and fire alarms generally run off of batteries. And with six other mechanical locking systems in place its likely that the electromagnetic component was designed to fail-open rather than fail-shut because they'd still want to be able to open the vault during a power failure, if need be.

It has been some time since I watch the fourth movie (which i consider the worst of the series), but I do vaguely remember a scene where the Big Bad reads aloud all the info about John McClane. That is his cop pension and family information, but NOTHING about John being a virtual superhero, who fought off three terrorist threats in the past. For that matter, how did John manage to remain a regular detective after all of the events in previous films?

The purpose of that scene is that Big Bad reads information that should be secure as a way of telling John just how good his hackers are in order to intimidate him. Everyone knows John McClane saved the hostages at Nakatomi Plaza, so there's no point in saying that. He then blanks those accounts to try and use it as leverage—immediately after, he tells John that if he kills the kid, he'll put it all right back and then wipe out his debts on top of that because he's just such a nice guy. Sure, it's a little bit of Wrong Genre Savvy that the guy doesn't realize that he's following in the footsteps of three dead guys, but that's pretty standard for a villain.

As for managing to stay a regular detective, well, what else is he supposed to do? Life goes on even after stopping a terrorist threat a couple times, so he's going to continue doing his job. Stopping three attacks over the span of a decade is, yes, somewhat above average, but it doesn't make you a "virtual superhero"—especially considering he almost certainly had to spend weeks recovering from each—and it doesn't mean you can just retire and live the high life. As the third movie showed, even being John McClane and saving your wife from two terrorist attacks doesn't mean you can even save your marriage.

Not to mention that while John thrives in a crisis, from what we see of his life outside those crises he does struggle to manage his day-to-day life. His life, frankly, is a self destructive mess; it is more a miracle he manages to stay a detective in the first place. It is likely all his juice as a celebrity is spent on just not getting himself fired. Sure a smarter and less self destructive person might be able to parlay those events into promotions and maybe even a speaking tour and (ghostwritten) book, but that person ain't John McClane.

Wow, I'm the only one who's thought of this? Okay, so John McClane kills so many people. But he's not wearing shoes. Why doesn't he just steal one of the dead guys' shoes and put them on? They're wearing socks, so he doesn't have to worry about fungal infections, and if he's really worried about it, he can douse them in alcohol (which should be abundant).

When he was scavenging gear off of Heinrich (the guy carrying the detonators), he had enough time to wisecrack with Hans over the radio, so he could've just as well taken his shoes, unless they were very tightly tied.

Maybe McClane has really big feet? After all, he is the hero :)

You're pretty much correct. If I remembered the respective scene correctly, McClane makes a remark wondering why terrorists have such small feet. It begs the question, is this innuendo / double entendre on body part size.

He tries to steal the shoes of the first terrorist he kills, but they're too small. I don't think he ever has time to for the rest of the film.

He could have just worn their SOCKS. Not hygienic,but better than having your feet get cut.

Except that would have increased the risk of slipping and falling if he walked over a tile or hardwood floor.

I've considered the situation a lot, actually, and figured there was nothing he could do. He had to be Genre Savvy to suspect the terrorists would shoot the glass, and wrap his feet in some clothes before (or just so not to have other disadvantages, like stepping in stuff that could hurt you without shoes, if not necessarily glass. But at that tension, it's amazing he had the Properly Paranoid idea to disguise his name and his reason for being there in the first place. Probably wrapping his feet in something would have made him too much of a Chessmaster, or Bruce Willis with his feet in clothes would have been too Narmy. Take your pick. Also, yes, he tried the shoes of the first terrorist and they didn't fit, so he thought "What the hell, I'm fine barefoot".

He could have, y'know, moved the glass shards aside. Hell, drop on all fours and you can sweep it away with your arms.

A. That risks being, you know, shot by the guys who're shooting at him, and B. his arms are just as easily torn open by glass shards as his feet are.

It is worth pointing out that in the amount of time John would have been able to take to think "Hey, I could sweep this out of the way", he would have been dead. He had no time to think about it, period.

He actually comments on it when he kills the first one. John (after trying to put on the shoes): "A million bad guys in the world, and I kill the one with feet smaller than my sister's".

I may be misunderstanding the explosives used, but why, when John gets the detonators and realises how important they are to Hans, doesn't he try and dispose of them like by throwing them out the window? I was under the impression that the explosive they were using doesn't blow up unless it's in direct contact with the detonator.

I think he kept them as a bargaining chip, in case Hans ever figured out who his wife was.

They're also a tool. "Now I have a block of C4. Ho ho ho."

No, he used that up long before he realised that Hans still needed the detonators. But I take the point about them being a bargaining chip.

While I agree that John walking through shards of glass in Die Hard 1 makes a really strong scene that underlines his determination, it is hard to believe that in that whole blasted-to-pieces office was nothing he could have used to at least try and clear a path in front of himself.

If you remember, that specific firefight was taking place in a datacentre. Generally, you do NOT want stuff you can trip on when lugging disk packs and magtapes around (I suppose it could have been the disaster recovery suite). The whole thing was on false floors..

Just watched the scene again. There were plenty of desks, chairs and other stuff in the room. But I (same as above) now think the real issue was time. It wasn't visible on the screen, but he was looking over to a door with an exit sign and then at the glass on the floor while the bad guys were shooting at him. The next time we see him, his feet are cut up. So he most likely had no time to clear a path.

Also on the subject of the glass: when Hans gives the order to shoot the glass in German, the other terrorist doesn't understand him. Hans then has to repeat the order in English to be understood. Even though all the terrorists are German.

I got the impression that the guy just couldn't hear him. It's easier to give the order in english quietly so it couldn't be heard by McClane, than in German, maybe? Or maybe the guy's not German. It's not really clear that they're all German.

You are correct on not all the fake terrorist (mercenary / Bank Robbers) being German. At least two of them are Italian, Franco and Marco. This leaves the possibility of other nationalities as well, Uli and I believe James as well. On an interesting side note, in the German release, the German dialogue was converted to English and the German names were changed to English counterparts (i.e. Karl was changed to Charles). This was done because terrorism in then West Germany was too fresh in memory (i.e. Bader-Meinhoff).

Or maybe Karl is thinking 'Huh? Why would he want to do that?'

I always had the impression that the first film intended for Hans to only be pretending to be German, and the reason Karl couldn't understand him was because he didn't say it right.

That would have been a hilariousBilingual Bonus if he had been saying "Scheiss die Fenster" instead of "Schiess die Fenster". (apologies in advance for any grammatical or spelling errors introduced. Been a long time since I've seen the scene or studied German.)

As clarification: Schiessen means 'to shoot'. Scheiss means 'shit'

As funny as that would be, it's quite clear Hans really is German.

I don't speak German, but I once watched the film with a friend who does. He translated the first command Hans gives as, "He's not wearing shoes." Karl gives Hans a look of confusion, then Hans clarifies with (in English), "Shoot the glass." Karl wasn't confused by the language, but by the relevance of the statement.

In Die Hard 4.0, the bad guys have hired a whole bunch of hackers to get their code in place, but to stop them talking have placed bombs in their computers that go off when they press a particular key (delete, I think) after delivering the code. Wouldn't it have been easier to use a remote detonator? It's not as if they were short of resources as they even had a hit squad in place to take out the target in case they avoided the bomb.

Most people aren't really smart enough, I don't think, to realize that computers don't just blow up. A squad of guys filing out of a van is more suspicious than a critical hardware failure.

True, but the point is the bad guys did set up the hackers' computers to explode but in a really stupid way - if you assume that the hackers aren't going to notice the bomb (which our hero didn't) why not have it set off remotely so you don't need to send in the SWAT team? And if you can't, for some reason (the receiver would have to be too big, or something) then at least have it activated by a key that he's much more likely to press (like the "Space Bar"). Team Evil's actions only served to point John McClane in the direction of the plot!

To answer why they didn't use space, it's because the bomb (or possibly something they programmed into the computer) caused the system to hang. What's the first thing they do when the computer hangs. Control alt delete.

Yes, we know how the bomb works, but the point is, making a bomb that requires the target to detonate it is a stupid thing to do when it's entirely possible to make one you can blow up whenever the hell you feel like it.

Even size doesn't excuse it. Considering that they were obviously able to get into the targets' homes, get to their computers, and plant the explosive without being noticed, they could just as easily have planted a remote bomb elsewhere in the home or room. Or even have placed a secondary bomb in case the first one failed for some reason (like it did here).

Well, the way I saw it, they pull up in the van, and they activate/upload some kind of "virus" which causes the computer to lock up. When the hackers hit the delete key to try and clear the bug for whatever reason, it detonates the block of C4. They try and focus it a little, to make sure they get the guy. If for whatever reason the C4 doesn't detonate, they call in the french guys to finish the job. It's a little convoluted, but then again, this is from the mind of a guy who initiated the world's largest ever cyberterrorism attack as a cover to stealing loads of money.

This seems to prove that they can not only plant explosives in the house but also send just about whatever transmission into the house while sitting outside. The reason this is [Fridge Logic] is that by making the bomb contingent on pressing a button on the keyboard it means that the hacker is near the computer when it explodes, which seems sensible. But that's negated if you have a guy in a van outside watching the house who can see the hacker and tell when he's near the bomb.

I always thought the explanation was disturbingly simple. Gabriel is an arrogant, sick, fuck who simply enjoys the thought that these other lesser nerds will actively end their own lives by failing to notice he is the uber-nerd and has rigged their own computers against them. The whole thing is as much about his salving his wounded ego as it about the money.

Blowing the computer served a secondary function. It ensured that if any of the hackers kept a record of what they'd done, it was destroyed, and that no one investigating the blast would find anything about the kids' doings.

Simple. Setting up the bomb to go off when you hit the delete key ensures that the hacker is in proximity to the bomb. Remote detonating it with your own gear runs the risk that the hacker might get up to take a piss or lean back or otherwise be in a position to not get exploded. But if he's leaning over his keyboard and hitting the delete key, he's right there up close to the bomb.

Yeah, but they've got a dude right there on the next roof watching anyway. It's not like they'd be remote detonating it at random, they seem to be pretty easily able to look into the rooms, so they oughta be able to tell when the guy's around.

Now, see, at this point I've given you a perfectly good reason for why to hook it up to the delete key, and you're just saying "But they still could have done it some other way!" So frankly it looks less like you're asking "Why did they do it this way?" and more like you're saying "I've caught the scriptwriters being dumb! Praise me!" and don't want to listen to other thoughts on the matter.

The virus wasn't transmitted by the van. It was transmitted in the final transaction between Gabriel's people and the hackers. The van was just there to make sure it went off and observe.

Except that it was transmitted from the van. There was even a fancy pop-up that said "uploading virus."

There's another possible explanation - they're trying to avoid leaving evidence. Yeah, the exploded hacker smeared across the walls is a bit suspicious, but as mentioned above, it seems like a lot of people don't know that computers don't just blow up. Identifying chemical residue as plastic explosive takes longer than identifying some debris recovered from the site as a remote detonator or a timer. Rigging it to the computer itself so the hacker detonates the bomb himself eliminates that evidence. The end effect is it buys them a little more time to enact their plan. It's still a stretch, but less so than "we just wanted to make it complicated."

I can't locate the reference for this on cracked.com,but here's something that has always bugged me: The crimes that all of the villains commit in the entire Die Hard series are so much worse than the crime that they are trying to cover up. Let see: Armed robbery moderate to length sentence. Terrorism: The death penalty...extrajudicial murder...Guantanamo. And why do the amounts they are trying to steal have to be so ridiculously large? The majority of people on Earth will never make more than a few million dollars in their entire lives. So I can believe people would do anything to get a million or two. $640 million dollars (Die Hard #1) was (and is) completely ludicrous.

Yes, but they're counting on not being caught. Remember what Hans said? "If you steal 600 million, they will find you, unless they think you're already dead."

And why shouldn't the money they're stealing be a huge amount? If you're going to risk the kind of things you just pointed out, there should be a significant payback. Also, keep in mind the 640 million was originally going to be split between like 20 guys.

I just did the math on it. There were 13 terrorists total (Hans, 11 gunmen including Karl, and Theo, the computer expert) so splitting $640 million between them would have netted each member of the group about $49.2 million. That would be about $89.5 million in 2011 dollars, more than enough money to live on for the rest of your life. Plus, Hans makes a quip at one point that the group will "be sitting on a beach, earning 20%." Not only are they getting a big payday, they'll be earning interest on it too! Yeah, well worth the "terrorist" label the media and police will pin on them.

And that's assuming an even split, which most jobs like this do not do. Hans and the computer expert would have likely taken the largest shares with the gunmen taking smaller shares.

A million dollars doesn't make you rich nowadays anymore. Retiring with a million dollar in the bank is possible, but you'd have to watch your spending for the rest of your life. Then, any number of CEOs demonstrate that once you DO have enough so that you can never ever realistically spend it, acquiring even more obscene amounts of money becomes an end in itself.

Yes, a million dollars still makes you rich.

A million dollars may be life-changing money, and may make you rich compared to most of humanity, but it doesn't make you rich by Los Angeles standards (where I live). You can't even buy a rich person's house for that much money, you'd need a lot more than that to live like a king for the rest of your life.

Well, it's a good thing they weren't planning on staying in Los Angeles, then.

Killing someone while committing a felony is a capital offense in most states, California included. So technically they were all at risk for the death penalty the moment Hans shot Takagi. The point isn't to avoid the penalties. It's to throw the cops off. The authorities will approach the situation differently if they think it's terrorists than if they think it's a heist. Makes them easier to manipulate.

In "With A Vengeance" we get a big speech about how safe the binary liquid bombs are until they are mixed and they'll never explode. Which begs the question why none of the characters on finding a bomb that hasn't mixed yet doesn't simply rip out the mixing tubes (or in the case of the bomb in the school, take a fire axe to the tubes.) Remember, till they mix, there's nothing to explode.

Well, the one guy mentions something about the one in the school probably being booby-trapped, but that aside, yeah. You'd think someone would at least lampshade what seems to be a fairly obvious weakness in the bomb's design.

Even with booby traps, they should be able to drain the fluid from one of the tanks. I don't think there is a booby trap that triggers the bomb if someone drills a hole in one of the tanks. If they're worried about the decreased weight of the tank triggering the bomb, they could either replace the fluid with water or drain it really fast so there isn't enough liquid left for the bomb to explode.

And let's not forget that, if you cut the mixing tubes, it doesn't even matter if it's booby trapped or not. If the liquids don't mix, the bomb won't work.

Let's not forget that McClane and Zeus were specifically confronted with a puzzle bomb where they had to match an exact amount of liquid. So the bombers clearly know how to set a bomb triggered by fluid weight and the cops couldn't risk a similar device triggering the school bomb.

This is probably overthinking it, but it could theoretically be booby trapped to destroy or release the contents of all canisters if the device is messed with. Considering that the mixed substance is detonated by physical shock rather than ignition (or a mix of the two) it would still be pretty dangerous if mixed together outside of the bomb. (And say, all over the floor around your feet.)

Or, the bomb could simply be booby-trapped with a small amount of C4. It doesn't blow up the school, but it at least takes out the EOD tech, and usually one fatality is enough to make the person in charge at the scene say, "hold on, let's wait for someone to think of something else."

not to mention, if the "small amount of C4" goes off, the holding tanks would be breached. Back to the "all over the floor around your feet" theory.

In the first movie, McClane jumps off the exploding roof, swings through a window, and then runs into the lobby, just in time for the elevator to explode. What on earth made the elevator explode?

Presumably the blast from the roof travelled down the liftshaft.

I put this in the Fridge Entry, but maybe it's more suitable here: In Die Hard, how are Hans & co planning to exchange all the 100 000 $ papers without poeple noticing? Let alone one?

Considering our current President wants to have armed American drones flying over our own airspace, why would flying one over Moscow be all that unbelievable?

There is a world of difference between having drones flying over your own airspace and having drones fly over the airspace of another sovereign country entirely.

And that hasn't stopped Obama from blowing up people in plenty of those other sovereign countries, has it?

There's also a world of difference between having drones flying over the airspace of a foreign country that you're in acknowledged conflict with and flying over the airspace of one you don't.

America isn't at war with Yemen, didn't stop Obama from murdering Abdulrahman al-Awlaki with a drone missile strike in Yemen. So there's clearly not as much difference as you think.

Uh, yeah there is. Yemen's air defence system isn't quite on par with Russia's, so the risk of the drone being spotted is significantly higher. An American-made drone being discovered and taken down at the same time as an attempt is made by an unknown party to break free a political prisoner and murder countless civilians? That wouldn't look too good. The difference isn't about morality, it's about the risk of being caught and the potential repercussions of that happening. That clear enough for you, Sparky?

It has been revealed more recently that the NSA has been spying on allied countries. While this is mostly in the form of wiretapping, it isn't out of the question in what is otherwise a simple action flick, for a drone to appear over Russian skies. Keep in mind, the US did send an armed drone over the Philippines back in 2012 and took out a village in the process in order to sniff out some terrorists.

Yemen and the Philippines are not nuclear powers. Russia is. Invading their airspace with military aircraft without their permission is a technical act of war, and while Yemen and the Philippines are vastly unlikely to declare war on the United States regardless of provocation, the freaking world ends if Russia chooses to do that. Rationally speaking, it should never have been risked at all even if the risk was only slight, because if the risk doesn't pan out, its the Apocalypse.

Did John and Jack drive all the way from Moscow to Chernobyl? Across the border? I really hope I'm missing something here..

That's covered under Artistic License – Geography. "Artistic license" is a better term because it allows for the fact that sometimes writers are aware that things don't work that way but write them that way anyway for the sake of a story. Not everyone considers accuracy to be the primary factor in determining if something is good.

In the first film, the criminals are pretending to be terrorists to hide the fact that they are actually trying to break into an electronically sealed vault, and their plan specifically requires the FBI to believe their ruse and cut the power. They are communicating with CB Radios, and it's fairly important at several points in the movie that this communication is not anonymous; when John, the police, or the crooks speaks on the radio everyone can hear it. Yet in one scene Hans goes right from demanding terrorists around the world are released, to asking Theo how he's coming on those locks. Isn't he worried the cops heard that?

He changed frequencies when he went to talk to Theo.

Pretty trivial question, but... why did John bring just one giant teddy bear to LA instead of two smaller ones? He's got two kids of teddy-bear-loving age at the time, and asking kids that young to "share" the same cuddly toy is a recipe for sibling rivalry at bedtime.

He's buying gifts on a cop's salary, and giant teddy bears presumably do not come cheap; he might only have been able to afford one and decided that the squabbles would be worth putting up with.

What makes you think his son even wanted a giant teddy bear?

Or his daughter, for that matter? Heck, maybe the bear was for Holly and the kids were getting video games.

How did Hans know so much about Mr. Takagi (e.g. where and when he was born, the camp he was interred in during WWII, the universities he attended, etc.) but not know what he looks like?

All Asians Look Alike? Either that or he was just putting on a show for the hostages, showing them that he was an intelligent man who had done his research, and not some thug who could be easily outsmarted or manipulated.

This troper just watched Die Hard for the first time a few days ago (Merry Christmas), and this was absolutely my interpretation: Hans 100% knew what Takagi looked like; he was just increasing the tension to prove a point.

He may not have had an up-to-date picture. This was in the 1980s, where even getting a picture of a CEO was not that easy a task, where the most recent publicity release may have been a few years old. That and when people fancy themselves up for a party, even guys, they may not look quite the same as that publicity photo in the lobby. Hans wants to make sure he gets the right guy, and he doesn't want to look bad by either getting the wrong guy or by admitting he isn't sure who he is.

Alternately, Hans does know which person in the crowd of hostages is Mr. Takagi, but he goes through the motions of "searching" for him as a psychological ploy. It's a way to test the nerve of his various captives - Do the employees sell out their boss by pointing him out? Does Takagi reveal himself voluntarily rather than let his workers be intimidated? - so that he can get a clear idea of how they'll respond to their captors' coercive methods. If anyone's going to get defiant, panic outright, or otherwise cause trouble, better to find that out sooner when his accomplices have total control than later, once they've split their forces between the upper office and the vault.

Shouldn't a hardened professional criminal and gunman like Hans feel the difference in weight between a loaded and an unloaded gun?

This feels like a weak excuse, but maybe he wasn't used to the weight of a police-issue Beretta and couldn't be sure? And he didn't want to seem too familiar with guns, so he wouldn't be able to check by ejecting the magazine and examining it.

Is Hans a gunman? He uses them a couple of times, but he's the brains of the operation rather than the muscle. He may barely know the first thing about operating one.

When John drops a dead mook on the squad car to grab the cop's attention (so far so good), he opens fire at it for a good measure. And keeps shooting. At a moving target, from considerable distance, and his weapon wasn't exactly a sniper rife. How the hell could he be sure he wasn't going to hit, and kill, the perfectly innocent policeman behind the wheel?

John did not shoot at Al, it was one of the terrorists opening up with a M-60 now that their ploy to make everything seem normal for now had been undone and sought to kill him before he could radio for help. You even see John watching the shooting and snarkingly say "Welcome to the party, pal.".

Specifically, when John says this, you can hear the machine gun fire in the background, and he's clearly not firing at all. Also, they show an angle that has the gunfire coming from a much lower floor.

If Sgt. Al Powell is assigned to a desk job, why is he driving around in a patrol vehicle and responding to calls?

The impression I got was he was on his way home at the end of the shift, happened to be in the area for what was pitched to him as a milk-run, and decided to check it out real quick and head home.

Powell says that this is exactly what happens. Did you watch the movie?

Although the question has to be asked : why is he driving home at the end of his shift in a marked police car? Doesn't he have his own vehicle?

In Die Hard With a Vengeance, McClane and Zeus defuse a bomb in a park, and then carry it with them because some kids might be hurt. When they hand it over to the bad guys' Mooks, posing as cops, one starts to leave it behind when they're called back to base, only for his partner to berate him for leaving it where it could hurt some kids. When it later turns out the bomb planted in a school was a distraction, Simon points out that he could never hurt children, as he's not a monster.—Tropers.Jonn

Also note that the bombs he *does* set off are in a storefront before business hours and in the subway station under Wall Street, neither of which would likely have any kids in it on a work day.

However, when the first fake cop is finished berating his friend for considering leaving it, they take it with them. They later use this bomb to blow up the dam, flooding the aqueduct. It was a live bomb. Simon may be a monster after all. That said, he may have anticipated the Good Samaritan's actions.

Think of Simon's plan: he wants McClane to succeed all the way, only failing at the near impossible task of cutting across town to reach the destination train station. As part of this plan, the bomb's not going to go off, is it? — wkz

Why does the electromagnetic lock from the first movie open when the power is cut? It would make a lot more sense to design it to remain closed unless power is applied to it.

Electromagnets are only magnetic because of electricity, so if you cut off the power, then there is nothing to keep the electromagnet sealed.

The electromagnetic lock was the only lock that was still working. Theo had gotten through or past all the rest of them. So when the power stops going to the electromagnetic lock, that means all the locks are open, so they can get through.

I think the original poster's question is more, why did it withdraw when the power was cut? Nobody was pushing it aside, it slid open on its own. Which ought to require power for whatever motor normally moves the thing. If there's enough backup power for that motor (not to mention the alarms and flashing lights), the vault's designers really should've directed it to keeping the electromagnets on during a blackout.

Could be a safety backup. If there was no power, someone could get trapped in it.

If Hans is able to effortlessly speak English with a perfect American accent, why does he bother speaking in a German accent at all? No one I know prefers to sound accented in any non-native language.

Speaking in an American accent takes effort, speaking with his normal accent does not.

He's also posing as a political terrorist, and in that time period, many of them were Marxist, including East German and sympathetic West German. The accent is part of the 'sell.'

Why didn't they get Alan Rickman to do a German accent properly anyhow (he's obviously good with accents?) It's really distracting to have Hans Gruber sound so British, even if it is handwaved with him going to school in England.

He actually sounds a lot like most Germans who learn to speak English well without much of a German accent do.

Hans criticizes American culture and society numerous times throughout the movie. Why would he use the accent of a country he clearly doesn't like too much?

That's an easy one - when he speaks in his American accent, it is for the sole purpose of trying to make McClane think he works there.

How are Hans & co planning to exchange all the (let alone one) 100 000 $ papers without people noticing?

Easy, Hans stated in the movie the true "treasure" they are looking behind Nakatomi´s safe is not money in regular paper, they are after the $640 millions in bearer bonds. This is an economic issue: bearer bonds are different from "normal" (registered) bonds since no records are kept of the buyer/owner, or the transactions made with them (like if you sell one of them to another private investor, even in a dark backalley), and they must be honored (paid) by the issuer up-front cash with no further questions. A smart move from Hans... (and this is why now bearer bonds are prohibited in most countries in the world, and all transactions with bonds and similar papers need to be registered, also as an anti-money laundering measure)

To add to this, bearer bonds were only issued in sums of $10,000 or less.

As brought up by CinemaSins, this actually implies a different form of fridge logic - the film is set after America's Fiscal Responsibility Act came into enforcement. So what sort of shady dealings was Nakatomi involved in to be carrying that much untraceable currency?

So in Good Day to Die Hard, the bad guys have a seemingly magical chemical that can somehow eliminate radiation in an area to the point of being able to breathe and walk around without gas masks or protective suits. If that sort of chemical existed, whoever invented it should get the Nobel prize because that would eliminate all the nuclear waste and contamination problems in the world ever.

There IS a gas called Brown's Gas that is capable of accelerating the rate at which radiation decays, reducing the amount of time before the area is safe to be outside of a hazmat suit, but it does not work NEARLY the same way as was shown in the movie. scientists estimate that it will be 20,000 years before the area around chernobyl becomes habitable again, and if Brown's Gas were used then it would reduce that time... to a few hundred or a few thousand years, This Troper is not sure how much it would accelerate the decay. And even if it DID work the way it was shown in the movie, they would need to spray ALL of Chernobyl and the entire surrounding area with that spray, not just the small area we were shown, an operation that would take weeks or months without a crop duster and a huge crew of people.

Also, the claims that Brown's Gas can even do this are somewhat disputed, after looking a few things up on google, I found that it's wikipedia page lists this under "Fringe Science." There were several sites that said the gas CAN be used this way, but none of them looked like trustworthy sites.

Even if we are generous with our Willing Suspension of Disbelief and just accept that such a wonder-chemical exists in the Die Hard universe - why then wasn't that chemical already used years ago by the official authorities to decontaminate Chernobyl?

As pointed out by CinemaSins: "Nakatomi has $640 MILLION in bearer bonds? After the Fiscal Responsibility Act was passed in 1982? After this revelation I'm not sure John McClane is killing the right people in this movie. I mean sure, Hans Gruber aand his crew are a bunch of murderous thieves, but what kind of shit is Nakatomi involved with?"

If you listen to Gruber when he is talking to Takagi, he mentions that the amount represents only 3 or 4 days working capital for the corporation. Why they would keep it in bearer bonds, which is as good as cash, is what's a really bad decision.

The bearer bonds are probably a holdover from the original novel the film is based on, where the terrorists are sincere rather than just pretending to be terrorists, and the corporation involved was profiting from arms dealing. In the movie itself the only hints that anything isn't on the up and up with Nakatomi are the scene where Hans admires the model, which is apparently a model of a Nakatomi facility being built somewhere in the world that Takagi is possibly a little too quick to protest is all being built legally and without exploitation, and the bearer bonds themselves. At best, it hints at some sort of corporate tax dodging or embezzlement of some kind. At worst, it's trying to hide some kind of ill gotten profits by using an untraceable currency.

Possibly the bearer bonds are legal in Indonesia, which is the location of the building project Takagi mentions. If you have $640 million in shady assets to convert to untraceable paper, and you need to stash it someplace away from government scrutiny, stashing it in a country where such bonds aren't even salable until you're ready to transfer the lot isn't that stupid of an idea.

Why on EARTH did Joe Takagi tell Hans that he would just have to kill him?! The guy is (or was, I should say) married with five, FIVE, kids!!! He had a damn family to look after! Not to mention he was the most important person in his company!! Why on Earth would he tell impatient terrorists with fully loaded guns that they would have to kill him?!

Honour Before Reason. Basically. Despite being an émigré to America he may still have had an ingrained sense of Japanese honour, especially if he had a lot of dealings with Japanese firms as part of his job. It is likely that Hans had put him in a No Win Scenario. It is possible that him giving up the information would lead to him being shamed, shunned, and unable to do business in Japan (or at least he thought that, anyway) and that shame being transferred to his family too. The only way to save his family from that sense of disgrace and to allow them to keep doing business in Japan was to sacrifice himself. It is a mindset that is still present in Japan, although to a much lesser degree, even today.

Or, Takagi was a very smart man, as such senior executives usually are, and he knew how to read the room: he knew Hans was going to kill him no matter what. Hans had gone to so much effort to sell the whole incident as terrorism to everyone else in Nakatomi Towers, and he couldn't risk blowing that secret by taking Takagi back to rejoin the hostages. (Remember, Takagi didn't know about the whole "Hans is gonna blow up the building" scam.) Ergo, Takagi was never getting out of that room alive, regardless of whether he gave Hans the access code. And if he's dead either way, he might as well cling to the (transparent) lie, both to spite the man who's about to murder him and to die with his honour intact.

And of course the Doyleist reason being the script needed him to so McClane and the audience could see just what lengths Hans would go to and to keep the tension going.

Why the hell didn't John just run back to the office he was in to get his shoes?

Let's see: one hand full of police-issue Beretta 92F, the other full of his holster with spare clips, keeping a close eye out the door to spot what was going on and whether there were terrorists about to come shoot him — yup, the first thing to do is definitely to run 15 feet across the room to fumble with shoes and socks, while you're most likely going to be indoors for a while and while armed terrorists could be kicking in the door any second to take you hostage or shoot you.

Then why didn't he take them and bring them to a more secure location before putting them on, or come back for them later?

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy